ST. PAUL, Minn. — Before the NHL’s Department of Player Safety suspended New York Rangers forward Matt Rempe for eight games Sunday for boarding and elbowing Dallas Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen on Friday, Stars color analyst Darryl “Razor” Reaugh captured what every viewer probably thought and felt.

“This is about as nefarious and Nimrodian as you can get,” Reaugh said during the broadcast.

Rempe’s hit was egregious. He came from behind, raised his elbow and delivered a blow to Heiskanen’s head and neck area.

Not every questionable hit will be so “Nimrodian.”

But under current NHL head-contact rules — or more so the interpretation of them — it feels like they have to be in order to result in discipline.

Saturday’s game between the Chicago Blackhawks and Calgary Flames featured a couple of questionable hits by Flames forward Martin Pospisil that officials didn’t flag.

In the first period, Pospisil clipped Connor Bedard in the head with his shoulder a split second after Bedard passed the puck.

Looking at replays, Bedard’s head twisted around, with his neck momentarily contorted, before he fell to the ice, but there was no visible reaction from teammates or officials.

In the second period, Pospisil popped Frank Nazar so hard, he went reeling backward into the boards. Hawks teammate Ryan Donato jumped in and dished out the appropriate punishment.

But that’s where the punishment stopped — and Pospisil was rewarded. He drew a roughing penalty on Donato, which set up Matt Coronato’s power-play goal that weighed heavily in the Flames’ 6-4 win.

I talked to several Hawks as well as a couple of retired NHL players about the hits — whether they were legal and whether they should be — and the reactions varied. Some thought the hit on Bedard crossed the line and the one on Nazar didn’t, but one person had the opposite view.

“From the bench that one (on Nazar) looked a little high,” Bedard told the Chicago Tribune. “He (Pospisil) came up on him a bit. So it was good that Dono stepped in there for sure.”

Asked about the hit on himself, Bedard said he hadn’t watched a replay of it.

“I don’t think I really had a big reaction (to the refs),” he said. “I didn’t care. I mean, obviously you feel it in the head, but he’s bigger, too, so I’d have to watch it to have an opinion. … So maybe, maybe not.”

Hawks defenseman Alex Vlasic said Pospisil has “had a track record of some pretty dirty hits in the past, so that definitely doesn’t look good on him.”

“But it’s tough. He’s a big guy (6-foot-2), and both Bedsy (5-10) and Frank (5-9) are a little shorter,” the 6-6 Vlasic said. “So if it was me going to try to hit those guys, it would look like shoulder-to-head contact just because of the way that they line up.

“I didn’t think either of those were crazy egregious, (but) the one on Bedsy was a little bit more of a blindside hit, which was pretty dirty to be honest with you. But that’s just the kind of player (Pospisil) is. He likes to get under the other team’s skin and he does a good job of it.”

Vlasic added that Pospisil “knows what he’s doing going after a young guy, brand new to the league” in Nazar. And he acknowledged that players have “to know when he’s out there” on the ice.

That speaks to some of the nuances some of the current and former players brought up, echoed by fans online.

When it comes to legislating hits, the NHL should consider doing more to protect its stars and to look out for younger players who haven’t yet learned the height-discrepancy part of the game.

I’m not trying to make the case for any of those reasons. I’m saying the NHL is too conservative in how it applies its head-contact rule.

Under Rule 48, an “illegal check to the head” is defined by contact to the head that’s avoidable. And avoidable contact is determined by, among several factors, “whether the player attempted to hit squarely through the opponent’s body and the head was not ‘picked’ as a result of poor timing, poor angle of approach or unnecessary extension of the body upward or outward.”

Did Pospisil make any contact with Bedard’s body beyond maybe a glancing blow?

I’m sure I’ll get shouted down for this, but I agree with Bedard: It looked like Pospisil’s forearm was rising to make contact with Nazar.

One of the old-timers I talked to, who has lived and watched more hockey than most of us could in a lifetime, held out his arm straight to demonstrate what should be considered an attempt to hit through the body. He then raised it 45 degrees to demonstrate a target to the head.

Neither he nor I is saying it’s that simple, technically, but you know what passes the eye test.

Or perhaps I should say, with a nod to Razor, the Nimrodian test. If Pospisil’s hit on Nazar wasn’t full-on Nimrod, it at least was on the scale.

The NFL community waged intense debates over how to define a catch until the competition committee changed the rule in 2018 to require a “football move.” We need to continue examining the “hockey moves” that define an illegal hit to the head.

It’s not about getting an extra penalty for your team or banishing that pesky agitator you don’t like to his couch for a few games, with his wallet a little bit lighter. Rule 48 was instituted during the 2010-11 season to reduce concussions in the NHL.

Some studies and reports differ on how successful the rule has been in meeting that goal, but a Boston University study published this month found that “among 28 former professional ice hockey players (who donated their brains), 27 players (96.4%) were diagnosed with CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), including 18 of 19 former NHL players (94.7%).”

Whatever strides have been made on this front, more should be done.

That goes hand in hand with a culture change. Another retired player said the NHL polices hits up to a point, and where it’s lacking, the players pick up the mantle from there.

Vlasic said as much during our conversation.

“It’s up to the league to obviously look at the hits that are suspension-worthy or fine-worthy,” he said. But “in the moment, on the ice, it’s up to the team, it’s up to our players, to police the game and support each other in any way we can.

“Like I said, Dono did a good job of stepping in there and doing what needed to be done and kind of letting them know that you can’t keep running around and doing this. Someone’s going to do it to you.”

I can’t speak for behind the scenes, but players and coaches seemed reluctant to tell the league publicly how to judge hits. An opinion, even a recommendation, can easily come off as criticism.

When asked about Saturday’s hits, Hawks interim coach Anders Sorensen said: “I don’t know, it’s tough to say. It happens fast. But I didn’t like how it went at their heads, especially Connor’s.”

I asked to talk to a Player Safety official and was told that, while the department evaluates every hit, it doesn’t answer such requests because 1) it probably would get such a request for every game and 2) even addressing a certain hit then calls that hit into question in the minds of many fans.

Also, the league source pointed out that the department could be reviewing the Pospisil hits and decide later to issue a suspension or fine, though there’s nothing to indicate it is.

The league just wrangled with this issue last month, examining three high-profile hits to the head and clarifying its reasons for suspending the Los Angeles Kings’ Tanner Jeannot for three games and the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Ryan Reaves for five while deciding against suspending the Vegas Golden Knights’ Zach Whitecloud for a hit against Toronto’s Matthew Knies.

The league said Whitecloud hit Knies’ core, and the force of the collision caused him to elevate into Knies’ head — therefore “unavoidable.”

Donato was familiar with all of those cases but didn’t want to overstep with an opinion.

“Player Safety has to do their job in that, but I’m not really the judge in that,” he said. “Like, I watch hits. Sometimes you could say you think it might be dirty, it might be clean. It’s kind of just preference-based. I’m guessing they have a system where they can decide.

“But for me, I (don’t) really mind it, I just watch it and let them be the judge.”

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